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Full House

It turned from serenity to chaos yesterday up here at the compound. Kent and Katie Eriksen showed up, then Pat Lemieux rolled in a little bit later, along with his girlfriend, Gwen Jorgensen, plus his dad, and finally Catherine showed up at the River Eatery around 8, during the Packers/Bears game.

It’s hard to stress how important Packers football is in Wisconsin. Especially rural, Wisconsin. So when the Packers play the Bears, the roads are empty.

I’m not going to ride much today. Probably about the same I did yesterday. Just over to the course and then the last 6 miles. Turned out to be a little under 25 miles. I don’t think I can get any fitter in two days, but I sure can get a lot more tired.

I haven’t really been checking into who is coming. So far it is the normal contenders, Brian Matter, Tristan Schouten, Cole House and Co. Cole’s team mate on the road, Mike Olheiser, Competitive Cyclist, who finished 2nd last year, is back. Along with 3rd place finisher Jason McCartney, ex- Radio Shack, now United Healthcare Pro is also back. New to the mix is Matt Busche, current Radio Shack Pro. I haven’t heard antthing about Christian Vande Velde yet, but his family has a place up here somewhere, so it wouldn’t surprise me to see him at the line.

It is funny, but everyone is asking if I get more nervous when the field is better. It is exactly the opposite. I would like to be racing against the best guys in the world every weekend, if I had the opportunity.

One year when the MTB Worlds were in Canada, there was a rumor that a bunch of European road pros were going to come over and race. My friend, Thomas Frishknecht, said something I thought was great. He said that he’d pay for up to 10 airfares of any Pros that wanted to come over. His rational was that he was going to beat them all and that it would just make him look that much better. And that would have been the case for sure.

Today always gets away from me. By the time we ride, clean our bikes, go over to pick up the numbers at Telemark and eat dinner, it is nearly tomorrow already. It is good that Dennis has so much room here for guests, the only problem is tomorrow morning for breakfast. It always takes a bit of a juggling to get everyone out the door tomorrow morning for the 10 am start. It should be fun though.

We stopped at the Rivers Eatery yesterday after the ride to have a beer. Here is Bill, Chap, Deb Wood, and Jeff Bradley.

Here is Dennis making a couple peg board hangers for the Kansas garage.

5 thoughts on “Full House”

Cool! I kinda got the “pre-race” excited feel just reading that. I really like going up there to race the Birkie (and pretty much any other xc ski event), but I have yet to give the Chequamegon a try. I’ll have to put it on my bucket list. Best of luck.

It’s also cool to see the pics of Gwen Jorgenson. What a triathlete star she is; just amazing, especially her running! It was a bummer to see her get a flat at the Olympics this year, otherwise I suspect she would have contended for the win with that run of hers.

Have fun tomorrow. I will celebrate my 52nd birthday tomo, with an early 2 hour ride, than some german beer and sausage, maybe a 1 hour trip to Hermann/MO watch some CX there nighttime atmosphere, live band, free beer..boogie woogie. True, when you play with pros more fun. 2 of my highschool soccer teammates turned Pro , playing for Stuttgart and Munich in the Bundesliga. You play with them ” guys who can play”, always fun..did this here about 10 years ago with some former USPros and ex national teamplayers..”makes it also safer”! Viel Spass beim Mountain Bike Wettkampf!